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..and then there's the Greek word for eternal, meaning period of time. How many agree with the version period of time and not forever?

~

What He Said

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.Mark 9:47-48

All right then! Apologists get ready! Hell does not appear at all in the version of the Old Testament used in Judaism, and Judaism has no concept of Hell. If Hell is such a vital part of Christian doctrine, and the Bible is inerrant and unchanged, then why does every version of the Bible seem to disagree on which verses even actually talk about the eternal place of torment and some versions not talk about it at all?

Why also wasn't Hell an important doctrine to the early church, if it was even a doctrine at all?

Think about it..

If Hell was real, why did the first comparatively complete systematic statement of Christian doctrine ever given to the world by Clement of Alexandria, A.D. 180, contain the tenet of universal salvation?

If Hell was real, why did the first complete presentation of Christianity (Origen, 220 A.D.) contain the doctrine of universal salvation?

If Hell was real, why do neither the Apostles Creed, nor the Nicean Creed, two foundational "doctrinal statements" for the early church, contain the concept of Hell?

If Hell was real, why did Church leaders as late as the fourth century AD acknowledge that the majority of Christians believed in the salvation of all mankind?

If Hell was real why did the early church appoint an avowed universalist as the President of the second council of the church of Constantinope in the fourth century? (Gregory Nazianzen, 325-381).

If Hell was real why did not a single Church council for the first five hundred years condemn Universalism as heresy considering the fact that they made many declarations of heresy on other teachings?

If Hell was real why didn't Epiphanius (c. 315-403) the "hammer of heretics" who listed 80 heresies of his time not list universalism among those heresies?

If Hell was real, since most historians would acknowledge today that Origen was perhaps the most outstanding example of universalism in the church, when Methodius, Eusibius, Pamphilus, Marcellus, Eustathius, and Jerome made their lists of Origen's heresies, why wasn't universalism among them?

If Hell was real and found in the original Greek manuscripts of the Bible, why is it that it was primarily those church leaders who either couldn't read Greek (For example, Minucius Felix), or hated Greek as in the case of Augustine, that the doctrine of Hell was advocated? Those early church leaders familiar with the Greek and Hebrew (the original languages of the Bible) saw universal salvation in those texts. Those who advocated Hell got it from the Latin, not from the original Greek and Hebrew. Who would more likely be correct--those who could read the original languages of the Bible or those who read a Latin translation made by one man (Jerome)?

If Hell was real then why did four out of six theological schools from 170 AD to 430 AD teach universal salvation while the only one that taught Hell was in Carthage, Africa, again were Latin was the teaching language, not Greek?

If Hell was real and a serious heresy, why was it not until the sixth century when Justinian, a half-pagan emperor, tried to make universalism a heresy? Interestingly, most historians will acknowledge that Justinian's reign was among the most cruel and ruthless.

Is it possible that Hell is in fact a concept of Pagan origins which later infected Christianity?

The concept of eternal torment in hell is nowhere to be found in the original Hebrew and Greek Manuscripts of the Bible, but it is found in the writings of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. For example, Plato (427-347 BC) discusses the concept of hell in his dialogue ‘Gorgias’ where he speaks of eternal punishment.

There can be no doubt that belief in eternal punishment in hell was a pagan belief embraced and Christianised by the church in Rome in the early years of the history of Christianity. Consider this quote from The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge, vol. 12, page 96: Retrieved April 29, 2007.

“During the first five centuries of Christianity, there were six theological schools, of which four (Alexandria, Antioch, Caesarea, and Edessa, or Nisibis) were Universalist; one (Ephesus) accepted conditional mortality; one (Carthage or Rome) taught endless punishment of the wicked.”

It was indeed the Church at Rome which first taught the pagan doctrine of endless punishment of the wicked, under the umbrella of Christianity. The Roman Catholic Latin Church Fathers, Tertullian (160-220 AD), Jerome (347-420 AD) and Augustine (354-430 AD), all strongly believed in the doctrine of hell. These early Latin Church Fathers are highly venerated Roman Catholic saints who believed that God’s punishment of unbelievers (all those who reject Roman Catholicism) would be in a hell of everlasting torment.

In 382 AD, Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome to make a revised translation of the Bible in Latin. Jerome, a Roman Catholic by birth, believed in the doctrine of hell and he produced the revised translation of the complete Bible in Latin known as the Latin Vulgate (circa 405 AD).

The rulers and magistrates, or priests, invent these terrors to keep the people, the masses, in subjection; the people religiously believe in them; while the inventors, of course, and the educated classes, the priests and the philosophers, though they teach them to the multitude, have themselves no manner of faith in them.

1. Polybius, the historian, says: "Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passions and violence, there is no other way to keep them in order but by the fear and terror of the invisible world; on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions." B. vi 56.

2. Dionysius Halicarnassus treats the whole matter as useful, but not as true. Antiq. Rom.,B. ii

3. Livy, the celebrated historian, speaks of it in the same spirit; and he praises the wisdom of Numa, because he invented the fear of the gods, as "a most efficacious means of governing an ignorant and barbarous populace." Hist., I 19.

4. Strabo, the geographer, says: "The multitude are restrained from vice by the punishments the gods are said to inflict upon offenders, and by those terrors and threatenings which certain dreadful words and monstrous forms imprint upon their minds...For it is impossible to govern the crowd of women, and all the common rabble, by philosophical reasoning, and lead them to piety, holiness and virtue - but this must be done by superstition, or the fear of the gods, by means of fables and wonders; for the thunder, the aegis, the trident, the torches (of the Furies), the dragons, &c., are all fables, as is also all the ancient theology. These things the legislators used as scarecrows to terrify the childish multitude." Geog., B. I

5. Timaeus Locrus, the Pythagorean, after stating that the doctrine of rewards and punishments after death is necessary to society, proceeds as follows: "For as we sometimes cure the body with unwholesome remedies, when such as are most wholesome produce no effect, so we restrain those minds with false relations, which will not be persuaded by the truth. There is a necessity, therefore, of instilling the dread of thoseforeign torments: 10as that the soul changes its habitation; that the coward is ignominiously thrust into the body of a woman; the murderer imprisoned within the form of a savage beast; the vain and inconstant changed into birds, and the slothful and ignorant into fishes."

6. Plato, in his commentary on Timaeus, fully endorses what he says respecting the fabulous invention of these foreign torments. And Strabo says that "Plato and the Brahmins of India invented fables concerning the future judgments of hell" (Hades). And Chrysippus blames Plato for attempting to deter men from wrong by frightful stories of future punishments.

Plato himself is exceedingly inconsistent, sometimes adopting, even in his serious discourses, the fables of the poets, and at other times rejecting them as utterly false, and giving too frightful views of the invisible world. Sometimes, he argues, on social grounds, that they are necessary to restrain bad men from wickedness and crime, and then again he protests against them on political grounds, as intimidating the citizens, and making cowards of the soldiers, who, believing these things, are afraid of death, and do not therefore fight well. But all this shows in what light he regarded them; not as truths, certainly, but as fictions, convenient in some cases, but difficult to manage in others.

7. Plutarch treats the subject in the same way; sometimes arguing for them with great solemnity and earnestness, and on other occasions calling them "fabulous stories, the tales of mothers and nurses."

8. Seneca says: "Those things which make the infernal regions terrible, the darkness, the prison, the river of flaming fire, the judgment seat, &c., are all a fable, with which the poets amuse themselves, and by them agitate us with vain terrors." Sextus Empiricus calls them "poetic fables of hell;" and Cicero speaks of them as "silly absurdities and fables" (ineptiis ac fabulis).

9. Aristotle. "It has been handed down in mythical form from earliest times to posterity, that there are gods, and that the divine (Deity) compasses all nature. All beside this has been added, after the mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, and for the interests of the laws, and the advantage of the state." Neander's Church Hist., I, p. 7. 11

The question with which this section began, "Whence came the doctrine of future endless punishments?" is now, I trust, answered by a sufficient number of witnesses to settle the matter beyond dispute. The heathens themselves confess to the invention of the dogma, and of all the fabulous stories of the infernal regions; the legislators and sages very frankly state that the whole thing was devised for its supposed utility in governing the gross and ignorant multitude of men and women, who cannot be restrained by the precepts of philosophy. 12

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well if you believe in Jewish mysticism, whoever you may be, then you will agree with this I guess:

The Jewish mystics described a spiritual place called “Gehinnom.” This is usually translated as “Hell,” but a better translation would be “the Supernal Washing Machine.” Because that’s exactly how it works. The way our soul is cleansed in Gehinnom is similar to the way our clothes are cleansed in a washing machine.

Put yourself in your socks’ shoes, so to speak. If you were to be thrown into boiling hot water and flung around for half an hour, you might start to feel that someone doesn’t like you. However, the fact is that it is only after going through a wash cycle that the socks can be worn again.

and it is summed quite nicely like this:

Of course, this whole process can be avoided. If we truly regret the wrong we have done and make amends with the people we have hurt, we can leave this world with “clean socks.”

That’s why our Sages said, “Repent one day before you die.” And what should you do if you don’t know which day that will be? Repent today.

So, as long as you know you are going to leave your earthly existence, you can always take a moment and make sure you don't go to the hell no one believes in.

I guess Jesus is just fire insurance in that case, oh but wait...most Jewish people don't believe in Him either! Might that be the reason they don't believe in hell? Jesus

had quite a bit to say about hell after all.

So confusing..........

This is really a question for the Christian left....or liberal theology.

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I guess it is very important to really understand what scripture states, otherwise, the end is not really the beginning. Hell does not exist, according to the bible!

Yep its true. A few years ago, I got into a discussion with a distant cousin of mine who went to school to be a minister. He claimed that, according to the bible, hell existed! I told him that the Bible mentions nothing of Hell at all. He scoffed and laughed and asked me what do I know? He was the one who went to school and studied the bible intensely for years.

I remembered a time when I had a discussion with someone who made the same claim, and encouraged me to study the bible in depth and seek out evidence for Hell. Upon a strong investigation, I came to conclude that indeed, there is no mention of the word Hell in the bible. Some modern bibles have replaced the words "Sheol", "Tartarus," "Hades", and "Gehenna" with the word "Hell". But the bible, in its original language only used the former four words to describe a place that people go when they die, (aside from heaven).

Determined to prove my overly religious cousin wrong, I engaged in an intense study of the bible and wrote up the following essay. I often now quote it to religious nuts when the conversation turns to hell. My cousin was angered and annoyed by it and couldn't come up with a reasonable argument other than "All that really matters is if we believe in the Christ." He seriously couldn't even approach contradicting anything in my essay.

My alternative to the theory of Hell, is that the options god gave us are to either go to heaven, or be destroyed forever and cease to exist. Heaven is more of an option that god is offering us, not forcing it upon us saying "believe or be tortured for eternity". No, god is saying "If you do not believe, you will not be punished, you will simply cease to exist. You will 'return to dust'" Heaven is more a gift that he offers us, however, we are not punished for not taking it.